The Android Device Bridge, which is included in the Android Developer Tools (ADT), should be installed and available on the command line (Windows) or terminal (Mac/Linux). I am assuming that your have already done that. This post is not to help you with setting up your Android development environment. Luckily, the good folks at AndroVM have already done this work. You have to setup an x86 VM, deploy Android O/S to it, install software, etc. Before you go all out and start putting together your own VM, be forewarned that entails a lot of work. The solution is to use a VirtualBox VM with Android on it instead of the Android emulator. I ran across a blog post by Chris Muir of Oracle, which offered a way out of emulator hell. Also when I give talks, it is nice to be able to easily project my work, holding my phone in the air for the audience is not an ideal solution.
I for one, don't want my phone tied to my dev box. But that is still far from an ideal solution. Most Android developers simply debug to a device and avoid the headache. While Google has done a commendable job of making each iteration of the emulator faster, it is still painfully slow. The slowness of the Android emulator has been the butt of many a joke since it was first unveiled.
